


the small space between them

by thebaddestwolf



Category: Bon Appétit Test Kitchen RPF, Chef RPF
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Mutual Pining, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22119367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebaddestwolf/pseuds/thebaddestwolf
Summary: Chris was the one who told Brad that Claire was seeing someone.or the one where Claire gets a boyfriend and Brad gets pissy, but they still can't stay away from each other
Relationships: Brad Leone/Claire Saffitz
Comments: 8
Kudos: 104





	the small space between them

**Author's Note:**

> because I rewatched the Milky Way Gourmet Makes and it lit up the angst part of my brain (a.k.a. the majority of my brain, tbh)
> 
> a departure from my previous fics for these two, but don't worry -- there is no cheating and the bf is fictional (& just a plot device). looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this one!

He doesn’t want to be this way -- especially not with her. If he were a stronger, braver man maybe he could help it.

He wishes he could help it.

***

Chris was the one who told him she was seeing someone.

Brad could tell he was trying to break the news gently, placing a hand on his shoulder and speaking quietly so the rest of the test kitchen wouldn’t hear. He could also tell that Chris didn’t buy it for a second when he acted like it was no big deal, said he was happy for her.

Claire never told him. Maybe Chris told her that he talked to Brad. Or maybe she asked him to do it.

Either way, if she truly didn’t think there was anything between them, that they were just friends and nothing more, wouldn’t she have mentioned it?

That’s the question that plays in his mind for the rest of the afternoon as they move around each other in the kitchen, Claire refusing to meet his eyes.

***

He’s never been so happy that it’s Friday. Things will be better on Monday, after he has a chance to throw back a few beers and process what this means.

***

Things aren’t better on Monday. He wishes that they were -- or that he could pretend that they were, at least, but he just can’t.

To make things worse, she’s filming today and eventually she needs his help. She always needs his help.

(He knows she doesn’t, not really. He’s never met someone more smart and creative and capable than her. But she likes his help, _wants_ his help, and he’s always happy to give it to her.)

Today he’s not happy. He helps, yes, but he needles her too. Wants to get under her skin a little bit. Asks her if she’s sure about the jam when he knows it’s her final attempt, tells her the biscuit is too crumbly after she thinks she’s perfected it.

And he wants to hate himself, but every time her face falls he gets a little rise out of it, because he feels like he’s been ripped in half so there’s something like justice in making her hurt too.

(There isn’t. He knows there isn’t.)

It doesn’t take long for her hurt to become anger, and he’s happy for that too. That feels safer. Like something he can get his arms around.

She’s trying to hide it -- she’s filming her show, after all, and she’s a professional -- but he can see it there, simmering in the set of her jaw.

“God, Brad, can you just go… do something else?” she says, smiling at him like she’s being playful, turning away from the camera so it doesn’t catch the coldness in her eyes.

And a part of him wants to stay put just to bug her -- just to see what’ll happen, see if she’ll snap -- but even now he can’t ignore what she’s asking of him. He never was able to do that.

“Sorry,” he says, gritting his teeth. “I’ll leave you to it.”

But ten minutes later she’s calling him over again, asking him to taste the new batch of jam. And he goes, because he always goes.

And so they past the next few weeks, angry and confused and by each other’s side.

***

Brad didn’t know what he thought was going to happen. Girls like her didn’t stay single for long.

He just thought, well...

He thought he’d have more time.

He thought he would work up the courage.

***

Molly’s husband has rented out a beer garden in Astoria for her birthday and even though Brad isn’t usually up for trekking out to Queens, he’s been looking forward to it. He needs a change of pace, a change in atmosphere. He needs to be somewhere where he isn’t at risk of physically bumping into Claire every five seconds.

It doesn’t hurt that Andy had not-so-subtly told him her boyfriend would be out of town.

And that’s not where his good luck stops. It’s a warm night and the N train is running on time and Molly must be even more popular than he realized because the place is packed. Brad’s nearly finished his first beer by the time he finds Andy and Morocco, and it’s entirely possible that he’ll never lay eyes on Claire, if she’s even here.

So he relaxes and lets the drinks keep coming.

***

The test kitchen kids always gravitate toward one another, and soon Delany, Hunzi, Dan, and Rick join them at a picnic table near the back. Brad’s having more fun than he has in weeks, and when it’s his turn to get the next round he grins as he steadies himself before heading to the bar.

He’s always been a cheerful drunk, and so the smile doesn’t leave his face when he spots Claire leaning across the bar, up on her tiptoes and trying to get the bartender’s attention.

“Claire!” he shouts, and she turns to him immediately, because he’s always been a loud drunk too. She looks at him with an air of uncertainty that makes him hate himself a little bit.

“Oh. Hey, Brad.” Her brow is furrowed and he really wishes it wasn’t. She used to smile when she saw him.

“Whatcha drinking? Next round’s on me.”

He pushes in next to her and signals for the bartender, who comes right over. Claire looks annoyed. Normally this is where she’d make a sarcastic comment about how he gets preferential treatment because he’s tall and loud and a man, but tonight she stays quiet and it’s much, much worse.

He orders her the fruity beer she wanted and a lager for himself, completely forgetting about the rest of the guys because the person he’d been hoping to avoid all night is now the only one he wants to be around.

When they clink glasses she doesn’t meet his eyes, but she giggles when her drink sloshes over the sides, and that’s a start. They move to the end of the bar where it’s less crowded, Brad guiding her with a hand on the small of her back, just like he used to before everything went to hell. He thinks it’s a good sign that she lets him.

Claire takes a few pulls of her beer and watches him, like she doesn’t quite trust him. And the booze in his system must be lowering his defenses, because the guilt he feels in this moment is overwhelming.

Brad doesn’t know what to do -- how to begin to make things right, if that’s what he even wants -- so he just starts talking. He acts like everything is fine, like he hasn’t been pissy with her over the last few weeks, like she doesn’t have a serious boyfriend who she has yet to acknowledge in his presence.

Claire’s uncertain at first but he’s always known how to break down her defenses and soon she’s giggling and swatting at his chest and he feels like he can breathe for the first time in days. And Brad knows this is dangerous -- knows that any promise their flirting once held is gone, now -- but they’re on a downward slope and it feels like there’s no stopping it.

Claire isn’t helping things, either. She’s tipsy, with bright, glossy eyes and a quick, wide smile that makes his heart beat harder in his chest. And when he puts his hand on her waist she doesn’t move away. (She never moves away.)

He keeps it there as he tells her a story she’s definitely heard before, but she’s laughing like it’s the first time, swaying toward him and making his stomach swoop. He squeezes her waist to stop her because it’s too close to being real, for him, and it works. Well. It does and it doesn’t.

She sets her glass down and places a hand on his arm, just above the elbow. She looks up at him, uncertain again, biting her bottom lip. She takes a deep breath.

“Brad…”

“Don’t.”

“I know you feel--”

“C’mon. Just don’t.”

“I know you’ve been upset. But I didn’t mean for you to be.”

“Claire…”

“I mean, I-- I didn’t think you would be.”

Brad drops his hand from her waist and takes a step back. She’s finally broaching the subject and somehow he’s mad at her for it.

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know,” Claire says in a small voice. She blinks and looks away, but not before he sees that her eyes are watery. “I don’t know, Brad. I just want us to be okay.”

He lets out an ugly laugh. He hates the way “us” sounds on her tongue, now. It doesn’t mean what he once thought it did.

“Brad, _come on_.” She grabs his wrist, slips her fingers down to his hand. And he lets her. (He always lets her.)

Because he’s weak he links their fingers together and watches their hands hang there, in the space between them, for a few seconds before letting her go.

“Okay,” he whispers. “I’m trying, Claire.”

***

When they head back to where the guys were sitting they find that the whole test kitchen crew is there, gathered around four picnic tables pushed together. Brad sits down next to Hunzi and Claire stands next to Christina, and they can’t be more than five feet away from each other but the distance helps. (He hates that it helps.)

So he focuses on his beer and listens to some story Delany is telling, and soon he’s throwing his head back to laugh along with everyone else. Claire’s laughing too and their eyes meet across the table for a few seconds and it feels good. Almost feels like it used to.

He thinks he can do it. He thinks things will be okay.

***

Later, when he’s walking to the subway he sees Claire standing on the curb waiting for an Uber. She’s texting someone rapid fire, a shy smile lighting up her face, and Brad’s walloped by all of it again so hard that he almost doubles over.

***

After he sobers up, gets drunk again, and sobers up a second time, Brad comes to terms with the fact that he has to make things right between the two of them. She didn’t do anything wrong and she certainly doesn’t deserve for him to treat her like a complete dick.

He thought he’d lost her, but in the cold light of day he realizes that was all in his head, that he couldn’t have lost someone he never truly had. Now he stands to lose her friendship, and he can’t let that happen.

So he gets eight hours of sleep on Sunday night, fills a water bottle to the brim with kombucha on Monday morning, and heads into the office ready to pretend that everything is fine.

***

It works.

It’s not easy, at first. They’re shy around each other. Painfully shy -- awkward and stammering and overly polite. She films an episode of her show without calling him over, even though he hears Dan prompting her to enlist his help. (He goes to bother people at their desks upstairs for the next few hours just to take himself out of the equation.)

But, slowly, things fall back into place. He compliments her baking and she smiles like she used to, telling him he can try some once it’s cooled. One day she teases him about the way he says “pomme de terre” and after his fifth failed attempt to pronounce it correctly they both double over with laughter, grinning at each other with flushed cheeks.

Then one night on the train home he realizes the whole day passed without anything being weird between them. And, damn, it feels good.

Somehow, while he was pretending everything was okay, everything became okay.

***

She still doesn’t talk about her boyfriend in front of him, even as weeks turn into months.

That makes it easier.

***

(One day she comes in with a bright red hickey peeking out just above the neckline of her shirt.)

(That makes it harder.)

***

Carla is the one who lets him know Claire and her boyfriend have split up.

Brad can see she’s trying to tell him carefully, like she doesn’t want him to read too much into it. She places a hand on his shoulder and whispers that Claire’s pretty upset.

Claire never tells him.

***

Brad decides it’s best to stay the course.

After everything, he values their friendship more than ever and he has to put that first, no matter how he feels.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy. Doesn’t mean that he stops getting a thrill out of being alone in the kitchen with her at the end of a long day, that he doesn’t notice when she her stretches her neck and unties her apron strings, doesn’t linger by the elevator so they can walk out together.

He’s still generous with his time and careless with his hands, resting his palms close to hers at her work station, pretending not to notice when their pinkies touch. He’s still in her personal space. He still doesn’t know how not to be.

He still _wants_.

But he still doesn’t know what _she_ wants, and so, for now, he lets it be.

***

As the weeks go by, Brad feels like he has less and less of a grasp on what Claire wants. Lately she seems like she’s mad at him, but he has no frickin’ clue why.

It’s like she’s always on his case these days, complaining about what he has cooking in the fermentation station, snapping at him when she thinks he’s being too loud.

At first he’s hurt and then he’s kinda pissed because, whatever she’s going through, it has nothing to do with him. He starts to wonder if her ex is sniffing around again, trying to come crawling back to her, and that spark is enough to ignite the tetchy feelings Brad thought he had smothered.

So Claire pushes his buttons, and he pushes hers right back. Their coworkers steer clear of them as they stalk around the kitchen, orbiting each other trading barbs and looks that could kill.

Brad hates it, but he kinda loves it too. It’s still something, he thinks, to be able to rile her up. To know just what to say to set her off, to be the one she’s shooting daggers at.

Because he doesn’t always know how she feels, but he knows how she feels in these moments.

(Because _he’s_ the one making her feel it.)

***

The fighting wears on him, after a while. He’s a happy guy at his core, and it’s just not sustainable.

But Claire’s still mad, so he takes it.

That makes her even madder.

***

Brad almost doesn’t go to Christina’s party. He meets up with his buddies from home after work to grab a few beers as he decides what to do. He’s just kinda beat, mentally and physically, and he wants to have a chill night. 

But after a couple of rounds he succumbs to the inevitable and hops on a train uptown, because that’s where Claire is. And even though everything is super fucked up, it’s still better than being anywhere else. 

Christina must be just as popular as Molly, because her apartment is completely mobbed. Brad manages to fortify himself with a few fingers of whiskey before Claire makes her way over to him. She’s in tight jeans and the blue and white blouse she wore back when they made pies, when they mixed dough with their fingers in the same bowl and he thought her stolen touches meant something.

He wants to tell her she looks beautiful. Maybe that would fix things. (Maybe not.)

“Nice of you to show up,” she says, and it starts.

“You been waiting for me, Saffitz?”

“Uh-huh. Sure, Brad. That’s what was happening.”

“Couldn’t find anyone else to beat up on, could ya?”

“Umm excuse me?”

She shifts on her feet, crosses her arms, and Brad’s ready for it. He lifts his chin.

“Yeah. You heard me.”

He hasn’t given as good as he got in a while and she’s gaping at him, stepping in closer like she’s gearing up to say something really nasty, and suddenly Brad’s had enough. He grabs her wrist and drags her through the crowd, down a hallway, and into the first room he sees. He pulls her in after him and shuts the door behind them.

“What the hell, Brad?” She wrenches her arm free, glaring at him. “Was that necessary?”

He steps closer to her, chest heaving as he takes deep breaths, months and months of tension and emotion finally bubbling to the surface.

“Claire,” he says as steadily as he can. “Can we please just… stop this?”

“Stop what?”

“This!” He gestures in the small space between them. “I’m sick of it. The fighting and the arguing and the bickering and the--”

Claire scoffs. “Those are all synonyms.”

“Huh?”

“You sound like you’re listing things, but all of those words actually mean the same thing.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Brad mutters, clenching his fists and crowding in closer. “Seriously Claire, what is your deal?”

“What is _my_ deal?” She blinks incredulously, like she can’t believe he’s asking her this. “You’re seriously asking me what _my_ deal is? After how you treated me before…”

By the time she trails off the anger has left her voice, replaced by something that sends Brad reeling. He lets out a long breath and reaches for her before he realizes what he’s doing. She won’t meet his eye, but she doesn’t protest when he gently takes both of her hands in his.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her. “I had no right to be like that. I didn’t. But I thought... I thought we fixed things. I thought we were okay.” He brushes his thumbs over her knuckles. “Weren’t we okay?”

“Yeah, we _were_ okay.” Claire huffs, eyes trained on their joined fingers. “But I thought we were something else, too.”

“Alright you’re gonna have to spell it out for me, Saffitz, ‘cause I’m not following.”

“Oh come on,” she says, looking him dead in the eye. “You were acting like a jealous maniac before. And then, sure, for a while, things were okay. But after… I thought… I hoped you’d…”

Claire looks down again, cheeks coloring, and Brad’s never been so confused in his life.

“ _What_ , Claire?”

“I broke up with him months ago, Brad,” she says quietly.

He’s about to prompt her to keep talking when she meets his gaze again. Her eyes are soft and vulnerable and sad, and finally he understands.

But that doesn’t mean he’s not dumbfounded. She’s watching him carefully, waiting for his reaction -- for him to say _something_. But Brad’s never been much for words on a good day, and in this moment he’s completely blank.

“ _Oh_ ,” he says.

She lets out a bitter laugh. “Hah, that’s great. Real eloquent response. Just what a girl wants to hear. ”

“Jesus, Claire.” Brad drops her hands so he can grip her waist and walk her back the short distance until she’s up against a wall. “Shut up.”

She raises her eyebrows and gapes at him. He can tell she has something on the tip of her tongue that’s intended to tear him to shreds, but before she has a chance to get the words out he bends down and kisses her.

Claire freezes, gasping quietly against his mouth, but it doesn’t take her long to recover. She loops her arms around his neck to haul him closer, kissing him back and nipping at his bottom lip. Brad growls, bunching up the thin fabric at her waist. He slips one hand beneath her top and flattens his palm against her lower back, anchoring her to him.

His mind can’t keep up with what’s happening. The kiss is bruising and sharp and everything he ever wanted. Claire rakes her nails down his neck and over his shoulders just before she slips her tongue into his mouth. It’s hot and wet and makes sparks shoot through his veins. He groans, tilting her head back so he can kiss her more deeply, sucking on her tongue and softly biting at her lips.

Brad feels like he’s on fire, like the world is spinning out around him. The only thing keeping him tethered is the feel of her. He can’t stop his hands from roaming her body, sliding up her sides, tracing the brand of her bra, drifting lower to squeeze the curve of her ass.

When Claire breaks away to suck at the column of his throat he inches ever closer, pushing his knee between her thighs, and the soft moan she makes against his skin is the best damn thing he’s ever heard.

“Fuck, Brad,” she gasps, leaning her forehead on his shoulder. “Wait, wait.”

Brad pants and clears his throat. “Okay.”

As he listens to her catch her breath his hands dip beneath her shirt again. He caresses her back then smooths his hands up her sides, thumbs ghosting over her ribs. Claire shivers and leans back to look up at him with red cheeks and that little smile she gets when he’s being ridiculous.

“That’s not exactly waiting.”

Brad chuckles. “Hah, well this is as close to waiting as I can get right now, Claire. Been doing a lot of waiting for a long time now.”

“Yeah,” Claire says, eyes softening. “I know the feeling.”

It’s almost too gentle when she presses her small hands to his chest and stands up on her tiptoes to kiss him again. It’s slower this time -- sweeter -- which is how he’d always imagined it. He cradles her cheek in his hand and kisses her deeply against the wall for a long, long time.

***

(Eventually Christina’s roommate needs to get something from her closet.)

(Otherwise Brad’s pretty sure he’d have never stopped.)


End file.
